“I need a photo opportunity, I want a shot at redemption.
Don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard.”
— Paul Simon
Friday, January 28, 2022
Escape from a Cartoon Graveyard
Monday, August 26, 2019
“I need a photo opportunity” — Paul Simon
Photo Opportunity , courtesy of Leni Riefenstahl — Click to enlarge.
From Paul Simon's dreaded Cartoon Graveyard —
The Riefenstahl publication above was suggested by . . .
Monday, April 29, 2019
Like Decorations in a Cartoon Graveyard
(Continued.)
“I need a photo opportunity, I want a shot at redemption.
Don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard.”
— Paul Simon
A death on the date of the above New Yorker piece — Oct. 15, 2018 —
See as well the Pac-Man-like figures in today's previous post
as well as the Monday, Oct. 15, 2018, post "History at Bellevue."
Tuesday, June 12, 2018
Like Decorations in a Cartoon Graveyard
Two visions of happy neurons:
This post was suggested by a link in today's New York Times —
"Simon Denny, the New Zealand artist whose work incorporates
board games, intervenes by introducing his own pieces into an attic of
the late-18th-century Haus zum Kirschgarten, already filled with
'old historical dollhouses, board games, chess games' and the like …."
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Remarks on a Cartoon Graveyard
For Crimson Jill
The graveyard of the title is from a song by Paul Simon.
Jessica Guynn, USA TODAY "By popular demand, Facebook is going beyond the ubiquitous thumbs-up button with a new shorthand to express your thoughts and feelings. Acknowledging that 'like' isn't the right sentiment for every occasion, the giant social network is offering new options. Reactions, five emoting emojis, are rolling out to Facebook's more than 1.5 billion users around the globe starting Wednesday. With a click of a button, you can choose from new emotions when commenting on a status update. Hold the 'like' button on mobile or hover over the like button on desktop and five animated emoji pop up. Tap on love, haha, wow, sad or angry to express your reaction. …" |
The "remarks" of the title —
The "Crimson Jill" link above leads to a Harvard Gazette
article dated March 24, 2015. A meditation from the
Church of Synchronology appeared here on that date.
Tuesday, February 27, 2024
Macbeth and the Black Arts
“I need a photo opportunity, I want a shot at redemption.
Don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard.”
— Paul Simon
Rhymin' Simon's lyrics seem particularly appropriate
in the case of the actor below, who reportedly died
on October 31 — Halloween — last year.
Earlier last October . . .
Saturday, July 29, 2023
Whistling Past Yankee Bush
"Don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard.” — Paul Simon
"Or tangled up in blue." — Steven H. Cullinane
Monday, July 17, 2023
Harry G. Frankfurt, May 29, 1929 – July 16, 2023
See as well this journal on the morning of July 16,
and also "Cartoon Graveyard."
“I need a photo opportunity, I want a shot at redemption.
Don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard.”
— Paul Simon
Wednesday, February 10, 2021
Multiversity News
“I need a photo opportunity, I want a shot at redemption.
Don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard.”
— Paul Simon
See also Lawrence, Kansas, in a Log24 search for August 2, 2002.
Related material: Text Tiles posts and, also from Lawrence, Kansas . . .
Thursday, January 14, 2021
Redemptive Ephiphanic Impression
“ Harry decides his chief peacetime duty is to use his
gift for gab to further his ‘overriding purpose,’ namely:
‘By recalling the past and freezing the present he could
open the gates of time and through them see all
allegedly sequential things as a single masterwork
with neither boundaries nor divisions.’ Once he opens
these gates, Harry will flood his audience with his
redemptive epiphanic impression that ‘the world was
saturated with love.’ ”
— Liesl Schillinger, review of Mark Helprin’s novel
In Sunlight and in Shadow in The New York Times ,
Oct. 5, 2012
"I need a photo-opportunity,
I want a shot at redemption.
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard."
— Rhymin' Simon
See as well Kristen Stewart in the
film version of . . .
Friday, October 18, 2019
Vibe for Ray Bradbury
On writer Kate Braverman, who reportedly died on Sunday, October 13:
" She wears floor-length black skirts, swirling black coats,
and black stiletto boots; the San Francisco Chronicle once
described her vibe as 'Morticia Addams gone gypsy.' "
— Katy Waldman in The New Yorker , Feb. 22, 2018
"I need a photo opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard"
— Paul Simon, song lyric
For a Braverman photo opportunity, see the dark corner
at lower right in the previous post.
Friday, June 7, 2019
Photo Opportunity
A post for those who, like Paul Simon,
fear and loathe cartoon graveyards
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/06/obituaries/
rudolf-von-ribbentrop-dead.html
Tuesday, May 21, 2019
The Toronto Plot*
* A title for Harlan Kane, suggested by obituaries
from The New York Times (this afternoon) and from
CBC News (on May 14, below) . . .
. . . as well as by illustrations shown here on May 13 and by
a screenwriter quoted here on May 12 —
“When I die,” he liked to say, “I’m going to have written
on my tombstone, ‘Finally, a plot!’”
— Robert D. McFadden in The New York Times
Another quote that seems relevant —
“I need a photo opportunity, I want a shot at redemption.
Don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard.”
— Paul Simon
Wednesday, March 27, 2019
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Nocciolo
"I need a photo opportunity, I want a shot at redemption.
Don't want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard."
– Paul Simon
From the previous post —
From a cartoon graveyard —
See also, in this journal, Smallest Perfect and Nocciolo .
Thursday, July 19, 2018
A Shot at Redemption
“I need a photo opportunity, I want a shot at redemption.
Don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard.”
— Paul Simon
From a cartoon graveyard on yesterday's date in 1957 —
For the photo opportunity of the Paul Simon song, see
my former sixth-grade teacher on that same 1957 page.
Thursday, January 4, 2018
For T. S. Eliot
“I need a photo opportunity, I want a shot at redemption.
Don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard.”
— Paul Simon
Sunday, August 27, 2017
Sequel (In Memory of Tobe Hooper)
“I need a photo opportunity, I want a shot at redemption.
Don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard.”
— Paul Simon
See also John Collier's short story "The Lady on the Grey."
Note that the title of the previous post was "Black Well,"
almost the same as that of Tanner's graphic novel above.
Thursday, October 8, 2015
Redemption
“I need a photo opportunity, I want a shot at redemption.
Don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard.”
— Paul Simon
A portion of the above photo appeared on the cover of
a German edition of a book by the winner of the 2015 Nobel
Prize in Literature, Svetlana Alexievich. The German title,
Der Krieg hat kein weibliches Gesicht , is closer to the Russian
original than is the title of an English translation, War's Unwomanly Face .
Further book and photo information —
Thursday, January 22, 2015
A Shot at Redemption
(Continued.)
“I need a photo opportunity,
I want a shot at redemption.
Don’t want to end up a cartoon
in a cartoon graveyard.”
— Paul Simon
Photo opportunity
for the late John Bayley and Iris Murdoch —
From a cartoon graveyard, in memory of
a British artist who reportedly died yesterday:
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Photo Opportunity
"I need a photo opportunity, I want a shot at redemption.
Don't want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard."
– Paul Simon
"The theory of poetry, that is to say, the total of the theories of poetry, often seems to become in time a mystical theology or, more simply, a mystique. The reason for this must by now be clear. The reason is the same reason why the pictures in a museum of modern art often seem to become in time a mystical aesthetic, a prodigious search of appearance, as if to find a way of saying and of establishing that all things, whether below or above appearance, are one and that it is only through reality, in which they are reflected or, it may be, joined together, that we can reach them. Under such stress, reality changes from substance to subtlety, a subtlety in which it was natural for Cézanne to say: 'I see planes bestriding each other and sometimes straight lines seem to me to fall' or 'Planes in color…. The colored area where shimmer the souls of the planes, in the blaze of the kindled prism, the meeting of planes in the sunlight.' The conversion of our Lumpenwelt went far beyond this. It was from the point of view of another subtlety that Klee could write: 'But he is one chosen that today comes near to the secret places where original law fosters all evolution. And what artist would not establish himself there where the organic center of all movement in time and space– which he calls the mind or heart of creation– determines every function.' Conceding that this sounds a bit like sacerdotal jargon, that is not too much to allow to those that have helped to create a new reality, a modern reality, since what has been created is nothing less.
— Wallace Stevens, Harvard College Class of 1901, "The Relations between Poetry and Painting" in The Necessary Angel (Knopf, 1951) |
For background on the planes illustrated above,
see Diamond theory in 1937.
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Through the Vanishing Point*
Marshall McLuhan in "Annie Hall" —
"You know nothing of my work."
Related material —
"I need a photo opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard"
— Paul Simon
It was a dark and stormy night…
— Page 180, Logicomix
A photo opportunity for Whitehead
(from Romancing the Cube, April 20, 2011)—
See also Absolute Ambition (Nov. 19, 2010).
* For the title, see Vanishing Point in this journal.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
For Black Widow
I need a photo opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard
— Paul Simon
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
The Hallowed Crucible
A meditation suggested by the April 20 post Complex Reflection
and by the life and April 20 death of a scientist who worked
at Los Alamos (home of the Monte Carlo method) and at
the Santa Fe Institute (home of complexity theory).
A search for 286 in this journal yields "Yet Another Cartoon Graveyard."
That June 1, 2008, post linked to poem 286 in a 1919 anthology.
Here is that poem, together with poem 823.
Together, these poems may be regarded as a meditation on
Simone Weil and her brother André Weil or,
more abstractly, on Love and Death.
Happy birthday to Al Pacino.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Shine On
"I need a photo-opportunity,
I want a shot at redemption.
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard." — Rhymin' Simon
See also Uncertainty and More Uncertainty.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Shot at Redemption
"I need a photo-opportunity,
I want a shot at redemption.
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard."
— Paul Simon
For Sabato's photo opportunity, click here.
The link is to a weblog post in Spanish published
on St. Thomas Becket's Day, 2010.
See also Helen Lane in this journal. Lane translated
Sabato's "On Heroes and Tombs."
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
To a Stand-Up Philosopher
Simon Says I need a photo opportunity, — Paul Simon |
See also the page linked to on
Becket’s Day last year,
as well as…
Friday, September 5, 2008
Friday September 5, 2008
For Mike Hammer
Block That Metaphor
“Michael Hammer, an engineer and author on management who helped popularize the ‘re-engineering’ movement in the 1990s, died Thursday [Sept. 4, 2008].
A spokesman for Mr. Hammer’s consulting firm, Hammer and Co., said Mr. Hammer died from cranial bleeding that began Aug. 22 while he was vacationing in Massachusetts. He was 60 years old.
Mr. Hammer was the co-author of the bestselling management book Reengineering the Corporation and founder and president of Hammer and Co., Cambridge, Mass.”
“An engineer by training, Hammer focused on the operational nuts and bolts of business.
Hammer’s relentless pursuit of ‘why?’ drove his entire career. ‘My modus operandi is simple,’ he once wrote, ‘though not always easy to carry out. I take nothing at face value. I approach all business issues and practices with the same skepticism: Why?’
A funeral will be held at 9:30 a.m. Friday, Sept. 5 in Stanetsky Memorial Chapel, 1668 Beacon St., Brookline. Interment will follow at the Shaarei Tefillah Section of the Chevra Shaas Cemetery at Baker Street Jewish Cemeteries in West Roxbury.”
Related material:
“I need a photo opportunity,
I want a shot at redemption.
Don’t want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard…”
— Paul Simon
Friday, July 11, 2008
Friday July 11, 2008
The HSBC Logo Designer — Henry Steiner He is an internationally recognized corporate identity consultant. Based in Hong Kong, his work for clients such as HongkongBank, IBM and Unilever is a major influence in Pacific Rim design. Born in Austria and raised in New York, Steiner was educated at Yale under Paul Rand and attended the Sorbonne as a Fulbright Fellow. He is a past President of Alliance Graphique Internationale. Other professional affiliations include the American Institute of Graphic Arts, Chartered Society of Designers, Design Austria, and the New York Art Directors' Club. His Cross-Cultural Design: Communicating in the Global Marketplace was published by Thames and Hudson (1995). |
from the past —
Charles Taylor,
"… the object sets up
See also Talking of Michelangelo.
|
Related material
from today —
Escape from a
cartoon graveyard:
Friday, July 4, 2008
Friday July 4, 2008
"I need a photo-opportunity,
I want a shot at redemption.
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard."
— Paul Simon
From Log24 on June 27, 2008,
the day that comic-book artist
Michael Turner died at 37 —
Van Gogh (by Ed Arno) in
The Paradise of Childhood
(by Edward Wiebé):
For Turner's photo-opportunity,
click on Lara.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Thursday July 3, 2008
This week, we the people of North America are staging two celebrations. The Fourth of July is the 232nd birthday of the United States….
In Canada, today, another ceremony will mark the 400th anniversary of Quebec City, the first permanent settlement in New France.
“I need a photo opportunity,
I want a shot at redemption….”
Log24 on August 8, 2002 —
The cast of “Some Girls,”
a film set in Quebec City:
“Don’t want to end up a cartoon
in a cartoon graveyard.”
Amen, sister.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Sunday June 15, 2008
I want a shot at redemption.
Don’t want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard.”
— Paul Simon
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Sunday June 1, 2008
Cartoon Graveyard
The conclusion of yesterday’s commentary on the May 30-31 Pennsylvania Lottery numbers:
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow:
“The fear balloons again inside his brain. It will not be kept down with a simple Fuck You…. A smell, a forbidden room, at the bottom edge of his memory. He can’t see it, can’t make it out. Doesn’t want to. It is allied with the Worst Thing.
He knows what the smell has to be: though according to these papers it would have been too early for it, though he has never come across any of the stuff among the daytime coordinates of his life, still, down here, back here in the warm dark, among early shapes where the clocks and calendars don’t mean too much, he knows that’s what haunting him now will prove to be the smell of Imipolex G.
Then there’s this recent dream he is afraid of having again. He was in his old room, back home. A summer afternoon of lilacs and bees and
286”
What are we to make of this enigmatic 286? (No fair peeking at page 287.)
One possible meaning, given The Archivist‘s claim that “existence is infinitely cross-referenced”–
Page 286 of Ernest G. Schachtel, Metamorphosis: On the Conflict of Human Development and the Psychology of Creativity (first published in 1959), Hillsdale NJ and London, The Analytic Press, 2001 (chapter– “On Memory and Childhood Amnesia”):
“Both Freud and Proust speak of the autobiographical [my italics] memory, and it is only with regard to this memory that the striking phenomenon of childhood amnesia and the less obvious difficulty of recovering any past experience may be observed.”
The concluding “summer afternoon of lilacs and bees” suggests that 286 may also be a chance allusion to the golden afternoon of Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. (Cf. St. Sarah’s Day, 2008)
Some may find the Disney afternoon charming; others may see it as yet another of Paul Simon’s dreaded cartoon graveyards.
More tastefully, there is poem 286 in the 1919 Oxford Book of English Verse– “Love.”
For a midrash on this poem, see Simone Weil, who became acquainted with the poem by chance:
“I always prefer saying chance rather than Providence.”
— Simone Weil, letter of about May 15, 1942
Weil’s brother André might prefer Providence (source of the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society.)
White, Geometric, and Eternal—
For more on the mathematical significance of this figure, see (for instance) Happy Birthday, Hassler Whitney, and Combinatorics of Coxeter Groups, by Anders Björner and Francesco Brenti, Graduate Texts in Mathematics, vol. 231, Springer, New York, 2005.
This book is reviewed in the current issue (July 2008) of the above-mentioned Providence Bulletin.
The review in the Bulletin discusses reflection groups in continuous spaces.
the phrase “as a little child.”
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Tuesday May 27, 2008
Cartoon Graveyard
The above is from
The Paradise of Childhood,
a work first published in 1869.
For the late Thelma Keane,
wife of “Family Circus“
cartoonist Bil Keane of
Paradise Valley, Arizona:
I want a shot at redemption.*
Don’t want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard.”
— Paul Simon
*
Mrs. Keane died May 23
(St. Sarah’s Eve)
according to
The Washington Post.
Related material:
Log24 on May 23,
Saints in Australia.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Sunday May 18, 2008
From the Grave
in yesterday's New York Times:
"From the grave, Albert Einstein
poured gasoline on the culture wars
between science and religion this week…."
An announcement of a
colloquium at Princeton:
Above: a cartoon,
"Coxeter exhuming Geometry,"
with the latter's tombstone inscribed
"GEOMETRY
600 B.C. —
1900 A.D.
R.I.P."
The above is from
The Paradise of Childhood,
a work first published in 1869.
"I need a photo-opportunity,
I want a shot at redemption.
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard."
— Paul Simon
Albert Einstein,
1879-1955:
"It is quite clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which was thus lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of the 'merely-personal,' from an existence which is dominated by wishes, hopes and primitive feelings. Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation…."
— Autobiographical Notes, 1949
Related material:
A commentary on Tom Wolfe's
"Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died"–
"The Neural Buddhists," by David Brooks,
in the May 13 New York Times:
"The mind seems to have
the ability to transcend itself
and merge with a larger
presence that feels more real."
A New Yorker commentary on
a new translation of the Psalms:
"Suddenly, in a world without
Heaven, Hell, the soul, and
eternal salvation or redemption,
the theological stakes seem
more local and temporal:
'So teach us to number our days.'"
and a May 13 Log24 commentary
on Thomas Wolfe's
"Only the Dead Know Brooklyn"–
"… all good things — trout as well as
eternal salvation — come by grace
and grace comes by art
and art does not come easy."
"Art isn't easy."
— Stephen Sondheim,
quoted in
Solomon's Cube.
For further religious remarks,
consult Indiana Jones and the
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
and The Librarian:
Return to King Solomon's Mines.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Tuesday December 19, 2006
at the Apollo
Click on picture
for related symbolism.
“This is the garden of Apollo,
the field of Reason….”
John Outram, architect
I need a photo-opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don’t want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard
— Paul Simon
In memory of Joseph Barbera–
co-creator ot the Flintstones–
who died yesterday, a photo
from today’s Washington Post:
Playing the role of
recording angel —
Halle Berry as
Rosetta Stone:
Related material:
“Citizen Stone“
and
“Putting the X in Xmas.”
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Tuesday November 22, 2005
Cartoon Graveyard
(continued)
From yesterday’s New York Post:
By LARRY CELONA, JOHN MAZOR and DAN MANGAN
November 21, 2005 — The former tour manager for superstars Paul Simon and Billy Joel was stabbed to death yesterday by his prostitute girlfriend on his 57th birthday less than a block from Gracie Mansion, cops said.
“It looked like a horror movie in there,” said an NYPD detective after seeing the blood-drenched bed in the couple’s sixth-floor studio at 530 East 89th St., where cops say music producer Danny Harrison was stabbed twice in the chest with a long butcher knife by his live-in lover just before 1 p.m.
I need a photo opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don’t want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard
— Paul Simon
Below: cartoonist Lou Myers,
who also died on Sunday, Nov. 20,
with a horse from yesterday’s entry.
“... and behold: a pale horse.
And his name, that sat on him,
was Death. And Hell
followed with him.”
Related material:
Log24 entries of
Sept. 15, 2003.
Saturday, October 29, 2005
Saturday October 29, 2005
For Kate Jackson on her birthday:
Drop-Dead Gorgeous
I want a shot at redemption
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard
— Paul Simon
"The idea that this Sad Geezer may fancy a cartoon character is, of course, ludicrous (even if she is drop-dead gorgeous…)."
"Dr. Cameron was also interested in how chemical elements are formed inside stars, a field known as nucleosynthesis."
(billion year-old carbon)
We are golden
(caught in the Devil's bargain)
— Joni Mitchell,
lyrics on the album
"Ladies of the Canyon"
Related material:
The upcoming film
of Aeon Flux
and
as well as…
and
Kate Jackson in
Satan's School
for Girls.
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Saturday September 10, 2005
x
I need a photo-opportunity. I want a shot at redemption. Don’t want to end up a cartoon In a cartoon graveyard. — Paul Simon |
Related material:
Nine Gates to the
Temple of Poetry
and
Law Day 2001:
The Devil and Wallace Stevens
Monday, July 12, 2004
Monday July 12, 2004
In response to this morning’s Wizard-of-Id example (see 1:22 PM entry) of a political Bob-Hope-style Christian wisecrack (a style more apt to make me gag than laugh), some further quotations:
I need a photo-opportunity, I want a shot at redemption. Don’t want to end up a cartoon In a cartoon graveyard. — Paul Simon |
The Washington Post on the gigolo candidate in Boston Monday:
“In a lunch speech to more than 1,000 women who had donated $500 to $2,000 to his campaign or the Democratic Party, Kerry was joined on stage by his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry…. He focused his comments on improving health care and creating more jobs — notions that he said ‘are not Democratic values. They’re not Republican values. They are American values.’ “
Let us pass over Kerry’s ignorance of the difference between desiderata (things considered desirable) and values (principles, standards, or qualities considered desirable).
A definition of “values” in a different sense, one that might appeal to the late St. Laurance Rockefeller, dead on 7/11, who majored in philosophy at Princeton:
“In an artistical composition, the character of any one part in its relation to other parts and to the whole — often used in the plural: as, the values are well given, or well maintained.”
— Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, 1913
Rockefeller is, I hope, now in a place where he can discuss this definition with Bach as it applies to, say, that composer’s “Goldberg Variations.”
Here below, another sort of Goldberg Variations seems appropriate to the times we live in …
The following composition was inspired by Whoopi Goldberg’s remarks at last Thursday’s Radio City Music Hall Democratic Party fund-raiser.
Motherhood and Apple Pie
Sources:
Ike Turner, Bad Dreams album,
Mom’s Apple Pie album (X-rated),
and Log24 entries of
July 9-10 and July 12.
Update of 3:17 AM July 13, 2004:
A place in Heaven next to St. Laurance
seems to have been reserved:
Tuesday, January 21, 2003
Tuesday January 21, 2003
Cartoon Graveyard,
or Betty and the Third Eye
I need a photo opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don’t want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard
— Paul Simon
The New York Times, Jan. 21, 2003: |
One of my favorite movie scenes is the entry into paradise, through a looking glass, of Kilgore Trout (played by Albert Finney) in “Breakfast of Champions.” Trout encounters a beautiful (indeed, angelic) maiden on the other side of the looking glass and asks of her, “Make me young again.” His wish is granted. Those who wish to may imagine — through a glass, darkly — a great artist’s entry into heaven with the aid of the very popular website Betty and Veronica.
PARENTAL ADVISORY:
The “Betty and Veronica” link above is more suited to Kilgore Trout’s usual publisher, The World Classics Library, than to, say, the Harvard Classics. Since Betty and Veronica have been attending Riverdale High for about 60 years now, I think we can assume they are 18 by this time, and can appear in an adult website. Their cartoonish appearance may be helpful to newcomers to paradise; it does not mean, as Paul Simon fears, that the afterlife consists only of cartoon characters.
For further details, see I Corinthians 13:11-13.
Saturday, January 11, 2003
Saturday January 11, 2003
METROPOLITAN ART WARS:
The First Days of Disco
Some cultural milestones, in the order I encountered them today:
From Dr. Mac’s Cultural Calendar:
- “On this day in 1963, Whiskey-A-Go-Go—believed to be the first discotheque in the world—opened on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles with extraordinary hype and fanfare.”
From websites on Whit Stillman’s film, “The Last Days of Disco”:
Scene: Manhattan in the very early 1980’s.
Alice and her friend Charlotte are regulars at a fashionable disco.
“Charlotte is forever giving poor Alice advice about what to say and how to behave; she says guys like it when a girl uses the word ‘sexy,’ and a few nights later, when a guy tells Alice he collects first editions of Scrooge McDuck comic books, she…”
“… looks deep into his eyes and purrs ‘I think Scrooge McDuck is sexy!’ It is a laugh-out-loud funny line and a shrewd parody, but is also an honest statement.”
(Actually, to be honest, I encountered Thomson first and Ebert later, but the narrative sequence demands that they be rearranged.)
The combination of these cultural landmarks suggested that I find out what Scrooge McDuck was doing during the first days of disco, in January 1963. Some research revealed that in issue #40 of “Uncle Scrooge,” with a publication date of January 1963, was a tale titled “Oddball Odyssey.” Plot summary: “A whisper of treasure draws Scrooge to Circe.”
Further research produced an illustration:
Desiring more literary depth, I sought more information on the story of Scrooge and Circe. It turns out that this was only one of a series of encounters between Scrooge and a character called Magica de Spell. The following is from a website titled
“Magica’s first appearance is in ‘The Midas Touch’ (US 36-01). She enters the Money Bin to buy a dime from Scrooge. Donald tells Scrooge that she is a sorceress, but Scrooge sells her a dime anyway. He sells her his first dime by accident, but gets it back. The fun starts when Scrooge tells her that it is the first dime he earned. She is going to make an amulet….”
with it. Her pursuit of the dime apparently lasts through a number of Scrooge episodes.
“…in Oddball Odyssey (US 40-02). Magica discovers Circe’s secret cave. Inside the cave is a magic wand that she uses to transform Huey, Dewey and Louie to pigs, Donald to a goat (later to a tortoise), and Scrooge to a donkey. This reminds us of the treatment Circe gave Ulysses and his men. Magica does not succeed in transforming Scrooge after stealing the Dime, and Scrooge manages to break the spell (de Spell) by smashing the magic wand.”
At this point I was reminded of the legendary (but true) appearance of Wallace Stevens’s wife on another historic dime. This was discussed by Charles Schulz in a cartoon of Sunday, May 27, 1990:
Here Sally is saying…
Who, me?… Yes, Ma’am, right here.
This is my report on dimes and pennies…
“Wallace Stevens was a famous poet…
His wife was named Elsie…”
“Most people do not know that Elsie was the model for the 1916 ‘Liberty Head’ dime.”
“Most people also don’t know that if I had a dime for every one of these stupid reports I’ve written, I’d be a rich person.”
Finally, sitting outside the principal’s office:
I never got to the part about who posed for the Lincoln penny.
I conclude this report on a note of synchronicity:
The above research was suggested in part by a New York Times article on Ovid’s Metamorphoses I read last night. After locating the Scrooge and Stevens items above, I went to the Times site this afternoon to remind myself of this article. At that point synchronicity kicked in; I encountered the following obituary of a Scrooge figure from 1963… the first days of disco:
The New York Times, January 12, 2003 (So dated at the website on Jan. 11) C. Douglas Dillon Dies at 93;
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Et cetera, et cetera, and so forth.
(See yesterday’s two entries, “Something Wonderful,” and “Story.”)
Two reflections suggest themselves:
“I need a photo opportunity.
I want a shot at redemption.
Don’t want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard.”
— Paul Simon
Ending up in a cartoon graveyard is indeed an unhappy fate; on the other hand…
It is nice to be called “sexy.”
Added at 1:50 AM Jan. 12, 2003:
Tonight’s site music, in honor of Mr. Dillon
and of Hepburn, Holden, and Bogart in “Sabrina” —
“Isn’t It Romantic?”
Wednesday, January 8, 2003
Wednesday January 8, 2003
In the Labyrinth of Memory
Taking a cue from Danny in the labyrinth of Kubrick's film "The Shining," today I retraced my steps.
My Jan. 6 entry, "Dead Poet in the City of Angels," links to a set of five December 21, 2002, entries. In the last of these, "Irish Lament," is a link to a site appropriate for Maud Gonne's birthday — a discussion of Yeats's "Among School Children."
Those who recall a young woman named Patricia Collinge (Radcliffe '64) might agree that her image is aptly described by Yeats:
Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind
And took a mess of shadows for its meat
This meditation leads in turn to a Sept. 20, 2002, entry, "Music for Patricias," and a tune familiar to James Joyce, "Finnegan's Wake," the lyrics of which lead back to images in my entries of Dec. 20, 2002, "Last-Minute Shopping," and of Dec. 28, 2002, "Solace from Hell's Kitchen." The latter entry is in memory of George Roy Hill, director of "The Sting," who died Dec. 27, 2002.
The Dec. 28 image from "The Sting" leads us back to more recent events — in particular, to the death of a cinematographer who won an Oscar for picturing Newman and Redford in another film — Conrad L. Hall, who died Saturday, Jan. 4, 2003.
For a 3-minute documentary on Hall's career, click here.
Hall won Oscars for "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "American Beauty," and may win a posthumous Oscar for "Road to Perdition," last year's Irish-American mob saga:
"Tom Hanks plays Angel of Death Michael Sullivan. An orphan 'adopted' by crime boss John Rooney (Paul Newman), Sullivan worships Rooney above his own family. Rooney gave Sullivan a home when he had none. Rooney is the father Sullivan never knew. Too bad Rooney is the
Rock Island
branch of Capone's mob."
In keeping with this Irish connection, here is a set of images.
American Beauty |
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A Game of Chess |
I need a photo-opportunity. I want a shot at redemption. Don't want to end up a cartoon In a cartoon graveyard. — Paul Simon |
"Like a chess player, he knows that to win a tournament, it is sometimes wise to offer a draw in a game even when you think you can win it."
— Roger Ebert on Robert Duvall's character in "A Civil Action"
Director Steven Zaillian will take part in a tribute to Conrad L. Hall at the Palm Springs International Film Festival awards ceremony on Jan 11. Hall was the cinematographer for Zaillian's films "A Civil Action" and "Searching for Bobby Fischer."
"A Civil Action" was cast by the Boston firm Collinge/Pickman Casting, named in part for that same Patricia Collinge ("hollow of cheek") mentioned above.
See also "Conrad Hall looks back and forward to a Work in Progress." ("Work in Progress" was for a time the title of Joyce's Finnegans Wake.)
What is the moral of all this remembrance?
An 8-page (paper) journal note I compiled on November 14, 1995 (feast day of St. Lawrence O'Toole, patron saint of Dublin, allegedly born in 1132) supplies an answer in the Catholic tradition that might have satisfied Joyce (to whom 1132 was a rather significant number):
How can you tell there's an Irishman present
at a cockfight?
He enters a duck.
How can you tell a Pole is present?
He bets on the duck.
How can you tell an Italian is present?
The duck wins.
Every picture tells a story. |
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Tuesday, December 17, 2002
Tuesday December 17, 2002
Not Amusing Anymore
I need a photo-opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don’t want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard
— Paul Simon
From The New York Times, Dec. 16, 2002
(See yesterday’s notes) —
John Patrick Naughton |
“Rebecca Goldstein remembers discovering Plato at the age of 12 or 13 in Will Durant’s ‘Story of Philosophy’ and feeling ‘that I was out beyond myself, had almost lost all touch with who I even was, and it was . . . bliss.'” |